Blowing shofar – in striped prison uniform A controversy in cross-currents.com two years ago led to a remarkable interview I was privileged to record recently. Erev Rosh Hashana, Sept.10,2007 I posted my translation of...
Oscar Hammerstein applied the words differently in South Pacific in 1949, but they ring true today. “You’ve got to be carefully taught,” for the most part, to take responsibility for the general community. Reflecting...
by N. Daniel Korobkin Recent criminal scandals within the Orthodox world have been devastating. How did we get to this point? To be sure, there are undoubtedly multiple factors that contributed to this new...
There is a world of difference between Tevya’s celebration of “Tradition!” for tradition’s sake and the deep meanings that lie in the rites and rituals of Jewish religious life.
The Swedish government refused to condemn a totally unsupported article in the country’s largest circulation newspaper alleging that Israel routinely kidnaps and murders Palestinians to harvest their organs. To comment, said Swedish Foreign Minister...
Elul is a month devoted to deepening our connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Ultimately, that process must take place on the individual level. But, as the Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Yisrael Salanter each...
The Jewish community in Prague almost immediately set off an association in my mind with a gemara in Menachos. Menachos 53B has Avraham almost at the point of despair for his people, after hearing...
And so there we sat, all through the Sabbath, watching as the synagogue in which we had been imprisoned mere hours earlier was claimed by the flames and, along with all the Torah-scrolls and...
When a shul dates back to the thirteenth century, you have to take pains to preserve it. So you won’t find an active minyan in Prague’s Altneushul three times a day. Monday, Elul 18,...
